A leading sociological theory of crime is the "routine
activities" approach (Cohen and Felson, 1979). The premise of this
theory is that the rate of occurrence of crime is affected by the
convergence in time and space of three elements: motivated offenders,
suitable targets, and the absence of guardianship against crime. The
purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence for the routine
activities theory by investigating criminal data on places. This study
deviates from... (more info)

A leading sociological theory of crime is the "routine
activities" approach (Cohen and Felson, 1979). The premise of this
theory is that the rate of occurrence of crime is affected by the
convergence in time and space of three elements: motivated offenders,
suitable targets, and the absence of guardianship against crime. The
purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence for the routine
activities theory by investigating criminal data on places. This study
deviates from traditional criminology research by analyzing places
instead of collectivities as units of spatial analysis. There are two
phases to this study. The purpose of the first phase was to test
whether crime occurs randomly in space or is concentrated in "hot
spots". Telephone calls for police service made in 1985 and 1986 to
the Minneapolis Police Department were analyzed for patterns and
concentration of repeat calls and were statistically tested for
randomness. For the second phase of the study, two field experiments
were designed to test the effectiveness of a proactive police strategy
called Repeat Complaint Address Policing (RECAP). Samples of
residential and commercial addresses that generated the most
concentrated and most frequent repeat calls were divided into groups of
experimental and control addresses, resulting in matched pairs. The
experimental addresses were then subjected to a more focused proactive
policing. The purposes of the RECAP experimentation were to test the
effectiveness of proactive police strategy, as measured through the
reduction in the incidence of calls to the police and, in so doing, to
provide empirical evidence on the routine activities theory. Variables
in this collection include the number of calls for police service in
both 1986 and 1987 to the control addresses for each experimental pair,
the number of calls for police service in both 1986 and 1987 to the
experimental addresses for each experimental pair, numerical
differences between calls in 1987 and 1986 for both the control
addresses and experimental addresses in each experimental pair,
percentage difference between calls in 1987 and 1986 for both the
control addresses and the experimental addresses in each experimental
pair, and a variable that indicates whether the experimental
pair was used in the experimental analysis. The unit of observation for
the first phase of the study is the recorded telephone call to the
Minneapolis Police Department for police service and assistance. The
unit of analysis for the second phase is the matched pair of control
and experimental addresses for both the residential and commercial
address samples of the RECAP experiments.

Scope of Study

Universe:
First phase: All recorded telephone calls to the
Minneapolis Police Department between December 15, 1985, and December
15, 1986, that generated a police patrol dispatch. Second phase: All
addresses in Minneapolis between 1986 and 1987.

Data Types:
administrative records data

Methodology

Sample:
In the first phase, 323,979 telephone call records were
selected by the investigators from all calls made to the Minneapolis
Police Department's computer-aided dispatching system during the
period from December 15, 1985, to December 15, 1986, after deleting
from the complete pool all calls that did not generate police patrol
dispatches, i.e., fire, ambulance, and administrative police records
calls. In the second phase, investigators selected 2,000 addresses
with the most calls from the total pool of addresses that generated
calls to police. Each address was then labeled as residential or
commercial, and the lists for these categories were rank-ordered by
number of calls. Then the top 250 addresses in each category were
identified as RECAP project targets with 125 of these randomly
selected as RECAP experimental addresses and the remaining 125 as
control addresses.